is there ever a good time to bring up whale meat?

 It’s probably difficult to take an unbiased stance on the topic of hunting whales for whale meat. It is a reality however, that in certain places, like Japan (and where else?), whale has been hunted and eaten for hundreds of years. During the restoration after the war, whale hunters supplied the impoverished population with thousands of tons of whale meat to bolster food stocks.

MacAurthur, as it happens, encouraged this practice – possibly because it was a cheap source of food, and also possibly because excess whale oil was then taken back to the United States and Europe, where it was used in the making of many things from lamp oil to soap. In fact, it became such a main source of food that only a few years after the war, over fifty percent of the meat eaten in Japan was whale meat. It’s since the end of the war that whale meat became a staple of school lunch, and even though it lost its popularity as Japanese consumers were able to afford pricier meats, asking around I’ve noticed most people remember having eaten whale at school growing up.

The loophole - if you want to call it a loophole - that Japanese whalers have operated on since the International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in 1986 is a provision that allows countries to catch a certain number of whales for scientific research. The meat from these scientific catches is then distributed for sale and eventually reaches grocery stores and restaurants. Mm, science meat.

 

Because this is a very sensitive topic to a lot of people, I’ve tried my best to remain neutral, but you can probably pick up my bias anyway. For those of you that live under the “don’t fry it until you try it” mantra, I will just say this – I have eaten whale. A sashimi plate of it was pushed upon my nose under the pretext that it was a cut of beef served rare.

Upon eating the first bite, the old man who had invited me to try it burst out uproariously, “It’s whale! Haha!” I protested that he might have considered a method other than deceiving me into eating it, his words: “What are you, Green Peace?”